Despite decades of effort and billions of dollars spent, two thirds of people in sub-Saharan Africa still lack access to electricity, a vital pre-cursor to economic development and poverty reduction. Ambitious international policy commitments seek to address this, but scholarship has failed to keep pace with policy ambitions, lacking both the empirical basis and the theoretical perspective to inform such transformative policy aims.Sustainable Energy for Allaims to fill this...

"The road to global security lies in lessening our dependence on Middle East oil and making sure that all people on Earth have access to the energy they need to sustain life. Weaning the world off oil and turning it toward hydrogen is a promissory note for a safer world." -Jeremy RifkinRifkin's international bestseller presents the clearest, most comprehensive case for moving ourselves away from the destructive and waning years of the oil era toward a new kind of e...

For readers of such crusading works of nonfiction as Katherine Boo’s Beyond the Beautiful Forevers and Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains comes a powerful and captivating examination of two entwined global crises: environmental destruction and human trafficking—and an inspiring, bold plan for how we can solve them.A leading expert on modern-day slavery, Kevin Bales has traveled to some of the world’s most dangerous places documenting and ba...

In this urgent time, World on the Edge calls out the pivotal environmental issues and how to solve them now.We are in a race between political and natural tipping points. Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to save the Greenland ice sheet and avoid catastrophic sea level rise? Can we raise water productivity fast enough to halt the depletion of aquifers and avoid water-driven food shortages? Can we cope with peak water and peak oil at the same time? These are some of t...

Developing the Global Bioeconomy: Technical, Market, and Environmental Lessons from Bioenergy brings together expertise from three IEA-Bioenergy subtasks on pyrolysis, international trade, and biorefineries to review the bioenergy sector and draw useful lessons for the full deployment of the bioeconomy. Despite the vast amount of politically driven strategies, there is little understanding on how current markets will transition towards a global bioeconomy. The question is not only how the ...

Innovation is increasingly invoked by policy elites and business leaders as vital for tackling global challenges like sustainable development. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that networks of community groups, activists, and researchers have been innovating grassroots solutions for social justice and environmental sustainability for decades. Unencumbered by disciplinary boundaries, policy silos, or institutional logics, these ‘grassroots innovation movements’ identify issues and que...

As the greatest coal-producing and consuming nation in the world, China would seem an unlikely haven for wind power. Yet the country now boasts a world-class industry that promises to make low-carbon technology more affordable and available to all. Conducting an empirical study of China's remarkable transition and the possibility of replicating their model elsewhere, Joanna I. Lewis adds greater depth to a theoretical understanding of China's technological innovation systems and its curren...

Biofuels and Rural Poverty makes an original contribution to the current controversial global debate on biofuels, in particular the consequences that large-scale production of transport fuel substitutes can have on rural areas, principally in developing countries but also in some poor rural areas of developed countries.Three key concerns are examined from a North-South perspective: ecological issues (related to land use and biodiversity), pro-poor policies (related to food...

For pathways to be truly sustainable and advance gender equality and the rights and capabilities of women and girls, those whose lives and well-being are at stake must be involved in leading the way.Gender Equality and Sustainable Development calls for policies, investments and initiatives in sustainable development that recognize women’s knowledge, agency and decision-making as fundamental. Four key sets of issues - work and industrial production; population and reproduction; food...

Wave, geothermal and biomass energies are complex sources of renewable energy. They require sophisticated equipment to harvest the energy and generate electricity for homes and industries. In this book, we’re going to learn the basic definitions of these energy sources. We’re also going to study the science and technology that converts them into electricity. Go ahead and secure a copy today!

Cars, Automobility and Development in Asia explores the nexus between automobility and development in a pan-Asian comparative perspective. The book seeks to integrate the policies, production forms, consumption preferences and symbolism implicated in emerging Asian automobilities. Using empirically rich and grounded analyses of both comparative and single-country case studies, the authors chart new approaches to studying automobility and development in emerging Asia.

Societies need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by 80 per cent in order to counter the risks of climate change. This study envisions a climate neutral society - one where the output of polluting gases is minimised by social innovations set up in households, by local authorities, through developments in information and communications technologies and dematerialization, and through the shift towards product service systems and emissions trading. The work discusses the possibilities fo...